Clara & Me
by MattHarrisFF
Summary: CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR HELL BENT Clara and the immortal viking Me begin their travels in an old Type 40 TARDIS, dodging the Doctor and running from time itself in a host of impossible adventures. But how long does Clara have before she finally has to Face the Raven?
1. Chapter 1

"To Gallifrey, like I said… the Long way 'round," Clara grinned, throwing a lever down on the TARDIS console and sending it into the time vortex.

"That sounds like something the Doctor would say," Me remarked cautiously, holding on to the console of the TARDIS tightly as the ship shook. "Something he would say when he didn't mean it, when he planned on running away forever."

Clara froze at that, the smile on her face drooping slightly. She let out a long breath of air, one that she hadn't even needed to take in the first place, and leant against the opposite side of the console for support. The other woman had figured it out fast, of course she had, she was an immortal. She'd lived for billions of years. It made sense that she was clever.

"Oh, the Doctor always planned to take the TARDIS back. So do I really. I know that this won't…" she choked off, tears threatening to break free from the corners of her eyes. "You see, time isn't exactly broken. It's just keeping me alive, immortal, we could just run forever if we wanted. You and Me."

Me gave her a smile, soft around the edges, sad. "It's okay to be afraid of dying you know, you don't need to hide it behind jokes" she said.

Clara span away from the TARDIS console, hiding her face from her new companion. "Just for a bit, Ashildr, we can run for a little while."

Me released a breath of her own, a much more necessary action for the immortal. "Fine, Clara, just for a little while we can run. But eventually you know that you need to go back, don't you. I told you on that street in London, eventually you will have to face the Raven."

"I know that, Ashildr. I know that eventually I will have to go back to Gallifrey, but I've just lost my best friend. Do you think we can just relax for a bit?"

"Of course, Clara. But first of all, my name is Me." Clara quirked an eyebrow at that, remembering the admission of her new name from Trap street. "Second of all I refer to my first question, where are we going?"

"Oh Me, all of time and space… where do you wanna start?"

 _AN: Hello! Really small start to a new fic I am doing. Kinda had to get it out before anyone else did really, I know that's kind of cheap but it really is the best way to secure reads. Ah well, sue me, I'm being a bit underhanded with my writing tactics when it comes to the acquisition of readers. It's a cuthroat world out here I can tell you._

 _Sure you've got the jist of where I am going with this if you caught Hell Bent. I'm sure it's gonna be a blast!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Shadow of The Night - Part One_

"Well, I think it's safe to say that the chameleon circuit is well and truly fixed," Me stated, emerging from the underside of the TARDIS console. "When we materialise the ship should blend in perfectly."

"Oh thank god for that," Clara replied, leaning against the controls. "An American diner isn't exactly the most inconspicuous of things."

"We should probably give it a few tries in different time zones though. Type 40's were notorious for having chameleon circuits that played up. Temperamental machines at the best of times." the TARDIS gave a shake at that, as if it were displeased at the viking's comment. "Okay, I'm sorry. I get it, you can't help how the Time Lord's fashioned your circuitry." The ship gave a faint hum, the lights shining brighter for a moment in the white room, happy with the apology.

"Weird isn't it?" Clara asked, the question not really making much sense.

"What do you mean?"

"Well this is how the Doctor started his journies, all those years ago. Stole a TARDIS and ran away. No I've done the same… I gave him his, once upon a time, and now he's given me this one," Clara mused, allowing her hand to absentmindedly stroke the console.

"Clara are you okay?" Me asked, Clara was acting stranger than she had expected.

"Am I okay? Yeah, course I am, only gotta live the rest of my life trapped between heartbeats. Wonder what would happen if I got shot?" She mumbled on, one hand clasped around the wrist of the other in an attempt to find a pulse. There wasn't one. She held her breath and didn't feel the need to cough. For all intents and purposes she was locked in a state of biological perfection, never changing.

"Clara, I'm your friend, and the only one you have at the moment. So if you need to talk to me, you can."

Clara returned the sad smile that seemed constantly etched on Me's face. One of pity and understanding, her own situation not being too different from Clara's own.

"I just need time, Me. It's been a tough day, I've died, then been stopped from dying, then I've had to make my own best friend forget me. Give me time and then I'll start to get over it all."

Me gave a nod at that. She knew better than most that time healed all wounds, she was billions of years old after all. She'd had more time to contemplate life than any other living being that had ever existed, and would ever exist, bar the Doctor of course. Then he seemed to be an exception to almost any rule.

The TARDIS gave a final almighty shudder, followed by a resounding clang. They had arrived.

"Where are we then?" Me questioned, looking at the scanner but understanding none of the Gallifreyan that was written there. It was one of the very few languages that she had never picked up over her many billions of years of life, and eventually she had figured that it was probably just impossible for non gallifreyans to learn at all. Just like the pompous race to design something like that.

"No idea," Clara replied. "Set it to random, and TARDIS's have a habit of taking you where you need to be, not where you planned to go. Or at least they do if they're anything like the Doctor's TARDIS. I reckon this one is, otherwise she would have forced us back to Gallifrey already." She made her way over to the door. "It's strange this, being the one at the helm of the ship. Guess I really am the Doctor now."

She opened the door and stepped out into the Victorian London street beyond.

 _-C-_

He was running. He was running as hard and as fast as his legs would carry him, and yet he knew, it wasn't fast enough. But even with that knowledge in the back of his mind, even with the snarling beast catching up behind him, he was running. Feet skidding skidding across the wet cobbles of the recently rained on London street, he wasn't just running, he was a man running for his life.

He ran straight into the wall, his arm cracking sickeningly against the stone, before slumping heavily to the cold, damp floor. He wasn't running anymore. That meant his time was up, that meant the thing that was chasing him would be on him in a matter of moments now. Tears seeped from his eyes, slowly tracking their way down his cheeks in silence.

The creature chuckled, sounding all too human behind its red, glowing eyes, and then his life was over.

 _-C-_

"That's the fifth one this month," The Lizard said to her wife, holding up the paper in her general direction.

"So it's a serial killer then miss?" Jenny Flint replied, taking a sip of the soup that was placed on the table in front of her.

"It would seem so, a serial killer that drains the blood of its victims and removes all of the organs from its chest cavity. How… imaginative," Vastra remarked, placing the paper back down on the table before resting her chin on the tops of her now crossed hands, thoughtfully gazing at the human in front of her.

"Don't look at me like that after you've just spoken about things being removed from the exact place you're staring at!" Jenny retorted playfully, a grin tugging at the corners of her lips. One that Madame Vastra responded to in kind, her gaze much more predatory.

"I can't help it, you're sitting there and you look positively delectable," Vastra commented, rising from her seat and closing the distance between the two. She dipped her head forward and gently guided Jenny's head with her own hand, ready to make their lips meet.

The sound of the TARDIS broke their moment of affection. Vastra faltered, let out a breath of air, and gave a short chuckle before backing away from her wife who now had a pout on her face.

"That man, how can a Time Lord have such terrible sense in timing?" Vastra retorted.

"Maybe because it isn't the Time Lord doing the driving this time," Clara's voice came from behind her. Vastra whipped around, just in time to see Clara strolling out of a grandfather clock that Vastra was sure hadn't been there a few moments ago, followed by a younger woman who had a large smile on her face. "Oh, you really did get the Chameleon circuit working, good job Me."

"Well, it was just a case of hot wiring the fragment links and superseding the binary referencing interface to create a state of constant temporal realignment," the other woman, oddly named Me, remarked.

"No, didn't understand a word of that, but still, got as much time as I need to brush up on my science," Clara chuckled, shaking her head slightly as if she had made a joke that she and only the now sadly smiling Me would understand.

"But I don't understand," Vastra cut in. "Clara, where's the Doctor? Why are you driving a TARDIS that can change shape?"

"A lot's changed Vastra, you should sit down. Me and I have a lot to tell you, and most of it you might not believe."

 _AN: Right then! Just as I predicted there is now a whole plethora of other Clara & Me stories, so I am going to be working pretty darn hard to try and boost this off the ground so we can stay ahead of the trend. Now, I've worked out a way that I am planning to do this story. Much like a series of Doctor Who there will be 12 individual adventures, the final of which will introduce some vast story changing element to the fic. I already know what that is going to be in this case. These will serve as 'Seasons' of a sort and I currently have no idea when those seasons will come to an end. Inevitably my canon and the canon of the show will end up diverging and this will turn into an AU of sort. In any case, I really do hope you enjoy Clara & Me. I'm having fun writing it so far. Did not really expect so much reaction to the fic so fast, 5 reviews for a one chapter story with under 500 words is really quite impressive. Hopefully I can impress you all!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Shadow of The Night - Part Two_

"The Doctor doesn't remember me anymore," Clara began, settling herself on one of the chairs of the long table. Vastra made to respond, but Clara merely raised her hand as a means to stop her. "The Doctor doesn't remember me anymore, but that's okay. It is needed. Together we were dangerous, together we would have ended the universe." Clara took a deep breath, though purely out of habit the movement of her chest calmed her in a way. Me came up behind her and rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, Clara couldn't help but smile at that. "On Gallifrey there was this prophecy, it involved a hybrid. They were arrogant, thought it meant part Time Lord and part Dalek, but they were wrong. It wasn't even a single person in the end, it was two. The Doctor and I, he would do anything to save me. That was why when I died he did everything he could to save me, waited for billions of years in a torture chamber running from his own nightmares, and betrayed every single rule he ever lived by," she was speaking quicker now, her carefully erected walls starting to come down. "He pulled me out of time and trapped me in a single moment, a biological time lock. I won't die now, not for a long time, not until I decide to go back to Gallifrey. But the Doctor needed to forget me, you see. Because if he didn't he would have kept trying to save me, he would have never ever stopped, even if it meant the destruction of time itself and the ruin of Gallifrey, just like the Time Lord's prophecy predicted. We weren't good for eachother, he and I, not really."

"So you stole a TARDIS and ran away?" Vastra asked, amusement clear in her tone.

"Learned from the best," Clara answered, matching the smile on both Vastra and Jenny's face. "We only landed to check if our chameleon circuit was working, Me is a bit of a genius."

The woman in question gave the two Victorians a wave, "It's nice to meet you, my name is Me."

"Bit of a funny name aint it?" Jenny cut in.

"There's a story behind it," Me smiled, she'd heard that question in multiple variations throughout her own eternity. "Long and filled with stupidity, a lot of it my own, more of it the Doctor's."

Vastra nodded at that in understanding, when things came to the doctor the stories were often long and filled with frightful danger. Much like her own life, but on an infinitely larger stage.

"May we see it then?" Vastra enquired, "Your TARDIS?"

Clara's face lit up with an ear to ear smile. "You'll like it, very different from the Doctor's. Much brighter, more roomy."

She stood and strolled, almost leisurely, to the TARDIS in its grandfather clock form and tugged on the door. It stayed closed. She tugged harder, the ornate wood rattling slightly. "Me, what have you done to the TARDIS locks?" Clara asked, worry clear in her voice.

"I haven't done anything to the locks, Clara."

"The TARDIS did this sometimes with the Doctor…" Clara mused aloud. "If there was something it wanted us to help with it wouldn't let the door open until we had fixed it…" She turned on the spot, narrowing her eyes on Vastra. "Has anything odd been going on here recently? Anything that you've needed help with?"

"Well, there's always the murders?" Said Jenny.

 _-C-_

Vastra and Jenny had laid the a map of London over their dining table and placed 5 pins into it, each of which corresponded to a death.

"At each of these locations a deceased body has been found. Three of the bodies were male, the other two were female, all of them shared one commonality," Vastra paused, perhaps for effect or perhaps to steady herself. "The bodies were devoid of blood, every last drop of it had been drained, and all of the victim's organs had been removed from the chest cavity."

"Well that's… specific," Clara murmured. "Is there anything linking the victims? Any links through friends or family?"

Vastra shook her head, "the only thing linking the victims is that they all died during the night."

Clara turned to Me, "did you ever encounter any creatures that could only come out during the night during your life?"

"You know that's not how it works, Clara. I can't remember everything, I've lived for billions of years and my brain is still only human. If I didn't know better I would say it sounded like a vampire."

Clara's eyes widened. Vampires were surely works of fiction, not something that roamed the universe feasting on the blood and the organs of humans. It was a ridiculous notion, though somehow not the most ridiculous thing she had ever come across. Of course that was just a shot in the dark, and probably not true at all, it was still enough to make her worry. What would the bite of a vampire do to her? One who was already trapped between heartbeats. Would she die if she were shot in the head? Clara was brought out of her musings by a heavy knocking on the front door of Vastra and Jenny's home.

 _-C-_

"We've come for your help, again," the Detective stated begrudgingly. "These killings are getting out of hand and are becoming more and more frequent, we haven't got anything to go on."

Vastra nodded. "Yes, well, we were just getting our things ready to start an investigation ourselves, so it's a good thing you came along when you did, but please do come in."

The detective did, making his way through the hallway and into the dining area. His eyes widened upon seeing the map. "You really do astound, Madame Vastra," he said. "You always work so much faster than us in the police do, I have great faith that you will be able to complete your investigations quickly. As per usual, I offer you any and all services that you may require."

"Well really we only need one thing," Clara piped up from the room, the detective looked at her startled, she'd been silent before and he hadn't noticed. Madame Vastra so rarely entertained guests.

"And what might that be?" The Detective asked.

"Access to your crime scenes, though I suppose Vastra has that by default," She threw a look to Me. "Come along Me, we have work to do."

Accompanied by Me, Clara breezed past the detective.

"And who exactly are you?"

"Oh me? My name's Clara."

"Clara…" The detective all but sneered. "Clara who?"

 _AN: That's it for another chapter. Sorry that my chapters are a little bit short, I figure if a write one or two of them a day then around 1,000 is an acceptable number, but please, if anyone disagrees do not hesitate to bring me up on it._

 _On another note, thank you all so much for your support! I really didn't expect it. I knew that there would be many a story based around Me and Clara, so to have been favoured by so many so quickly with such high praise is a real buzz, like really I can't thank you all enough. Please leave reviews if you can, it means a lot to me. I may even end up releasing another chapter tonight!_


	4. Chapter 4

_**AN: Now I don't like doing Authors Notes at the beginning of a chapter, they look ugly and gross and blech and intrusive. But I kind of need to this time, because it has to explain some stuff. Now, I've teamed up with a good friend of mine Seafoam-Tainted-Memoirs, she's a pretty big who-fic writer and has been a good friend of mine for over a year now. We've decided to link our fics. It wont be major and if you haven't read the megalithic 3D9C and its sequel 4D12C you wont miss out on much, only a reference here or there. Now whilst Seafoam's collective fic length is nearly 2 million words I do advise you to go read it. Probably my favourite fic on this site, I wouldn't have agreed to work with her if it wasnt. Who knows, I might even get her to write a chapter or two for this fic at some point. Actually I probably wont. It'd devolve into the ever expanding legends of the Lesbians and Rose. Enjoy the chapter!**_

 _Shadow of The Night - Part Three_

 _Clara_

The street was narrow, dingy, wet, cold and smelt vaguely of stale alcohol. It was exactly what you would expect an old Victorian London street to be if you looked at a picture or read a book about the era. It was one of the things that Clara lived for when she traveled, that feeling of complete immersion into a period of time, something that could never be achieved when you went to a museum or leafed through a novel. Not that novels or poetry were bad things, on the contrary she made her living off of teaching about them. Well, she did whilst she was living at least. In any case, nothing quite beat wading through the filth of human history. A dull patch of copper red stained the ground next to the wall that closed off the alleyway at its far end, that was the crime scene then. A man had died there not too long ago, screaming and squirming as some beast ripped apart his internal organs. Clara paled at the thought.

"Are you okay Clara?" Me asked, picking up on her friends discomfort.

"Yeah… It was different with the Doctor, we didn't really lurk around crime scenes that much. It was all running about and making out with cute blondes," Clara responded distractedly, walking towards the scene slowly.

"Cute blondes?" Me queried, the confusion clear on her face. Clara chuckled at that. Of course, the Viking didn't know about her time in the alternate universe, upon a TARDIS filled with Doctor's past, present and future. A TARDIS where she happened across a very attractive blonde female Time Lord named Jenny.

"It's a long story. Lots of Aliens, as in from the movie. There was this girl, Jenny was her name, Blonde hair and a cute smile, how could I resist?" Clara explained, narrowing her eyes at the pool of blood that she was really learning absolutely nothing from at all. "Oh, and she was the Doctor's Daughter."

"The Doctor's daughter?" Me exclaimed incredulously, "You slept with the Doctor's daughter?"

"Sometimes, I mean I also slept with Jane Austen. Jenny's better though, she has a robotic hand. Think of all the possibilities," Clara gave a quick chuckle before honing in on something on the ground.

"A robot-"

"No, shut up, look at the ground, the blood, what do you see?" Clara cut Me off before she could pry any deeper into her sexual history, not that she was particularly ashamed of that part of her, there were just more important issues afoot.

"I see a trickle, little drips on the ground, leading up and over the wall," Me murmured, as if she were astounded that she hadn't spotted it before. Maybe she needed glasses, she was getting on in years after all.

It was at that point the trio of the police inspector, Jenny Flint and Madam Vastra came sprinting around the corner, the first of which seemed very out of breath. He leant up against the wall of the alleyway panting, beads of sweat tracking their way down his cheeks. Though she didn't voice it, Clara wasn't surprised there were so many unsolved cases in the heart of London if men like him were supposed to be the best and brightest.

"Took your time," Clara commented, shooting a bemused look at the three new arrivals.

"Yes, well, I had to put my veil on and the good detective isn't as fit as he used to be," Vastra all but snapped back, Jenny was unable to keep the small grin off of her face.

"Well don't worry about all that Vastra, what do you make of the blood pool?"

Clara could tell that Vastra was giving her a dark and cold stare under her veil, her eyes narrowed somewhat. The Lizard Woman stalked past the human, scanning her eyes quickly across the dried blood. Clara just about heard her release a short breath of air, Vastra had figured it out quicker than she had.

"There are droplets of blood leading over the wall at the end of the street," She said aloud. "Detective, how did your men not spot this sooner?"

The Detective didn't have a response as he pushed off the wall and looked at the piece of evidence that the rest of them had seemed to miss.

"But miss Vastra, there's nothin' over those walls. It's just houses," Jenny exclaimed, "I don't see how that trail of blood is gonna help at all."

"No, it's not just houses," The Detective cut in. "There's an entrance to the sewerage development over that wall. It's currently closed off for the building of the new sewage systems."

Clara's nose wrinkled involuntarily. The sewage systems would not be a pleasant place to be, or at least it wouldn't be if they were in use. Luckily the detectives words implied that they weren't, considering they were still under construction. Still, a rat run of underground tunnels wouldn't exactly be the most fun of locations to be searching for murderers in.

"If it is down in a dangerous location and restricted location, will we be able to get permission to search down there for the culprit?" Me questioned the detective, who was still red in the face and clearly out of breath.

"Um, yes, of course. The Veiled Detective always gets access to areas that will help her solve a case when we cannot," The detective mumbled.

"Right, in that case, lead the way Sir!" Clara grinned, a bright glint in her eyes. They would stop the killer before he had a chance to strike again.

 _ **AN 2: Ewwww two authors notes, grooooooss! Yeah I know right, at this rate we will have more AN than story. Sorry this one has come out so late. Sorry it is still short. I didn't have much time to write today so I couldn't write two parts and then meld them together like Chocolate Minion suggested. I have been reading all of your reviews, question, should I respond to you individually or in the fic in an authors note?**_


	5. Chapter 5

The Detective lead the way through London's backstreets slowly, he was a potbellied man who probably didn't leave the yard all too often. Clara thought that they would have been better off with Vastras guidance anyway, she'd lived in the city solving crimes for years now, and she would have moved much quicker than the balding man in front of them.

"It's a miracle of engineering," he was saying, "the sewerage system is set to completely revitalise London's waste management!"

If she was completely honest, Clara didn't care at all about the new developments of London's sewage systems. It may have been a miracle to the good detective, but to Clara it sounded just a little bit crap.

"So what are you an' her doin' then?" Jenny asked, nodding towards Me who was deep in conversation with Vastra, their tones in hushed whispers. Clara couldn't help but think they were talking about her and her situation, perhaps even debating the best ways to get her to return to Gallifrey as soon as possible. She dismissed the thought, she wouldn't go back just yet. She wasn't ready, and no matter what Ashildr tried there was no way she would let it happen.

"Oh you know, this and that. Hopping around time and space, doing what I would have done if I were still with the Doctor," Clara responded, shooting Jenny a small smile. Her questions were innocent enough, and she'd always gotten along with the girl when she visited the Paternosters with the Doctor. She felt as if she could share at least some of her plans with the Victorian woman.

"Yah miss 'im, don't yah," Jenny said, her face softening somewhat into a knowing smile. It was the smile of someone who had lost friends before, the smile of someone who understood the raw grief she was trying to run away from. Of course he had been mean and degrading at times, and yes she still had the other TARDIS crew fully stocked with four Doctors who all remembered her perfectly well. But it wasn't the same, the Doctor had been her best friend. They'd been through it all together, and that loss wasn't something she was willing to face, in many ways it was a Raven all of its own.

"He was my friend," Clara settled on. "Of course I miss him. But it's okay, really, people lose friends all the time, you just gotta keep on going."

Jenny shook her head at that, as if she could see through Clara's carefully constructed walls and straight into her innermost thoughts. "You mean you gotta keep on running," Jenny remarked.

"You remind me of someone sometimes, she's called Jenny too," Clara murmured, narrowing her eyes slightly at the Victorian woman.

"Would you please stop flirting with my wife," Vastra called over her shoulder, barely breaking conversation with the immortal viking.

Clara blushed bright red and made a very visible step away from Jenny, who only laughed at her antics. "Only if you stop trying to steal away my companion," Clara remarked, she smirked at the sight of Vastra's gloved fist clenching slightly. She still found Vastra to be too pompous and stuck up for her own good, hypocritical too.

"She wasn't trying to steal me, Clara, we were just discussing… you," Me cut in, her voice unsure. That confirmed what Clara had been thinking, the two had been conspiring to get her to return to Gallifrey after all. "Vastra had some questions, I thought that they should be answered. Now she won't do anything silly like tell the Doctor if he comes along."

"So you weren't trying to get me to go back to Gallifrey?" Clara asked, catching back up with Me and Vastra in a few extra steps "Sooner than I intended, of course."

"That would mean sending you to your death," Vastra exclaimed, offended at the very notion that Clara would think so little of her. "You are a friend of the Doctor's, we would never do such a thing."

Clara couldn't help the small smile that graced her lips at that, it seemed to be infectious considering how quickly Me's own mouth reflected her grin.

"Okay ladies, we have arrived at the entrance to the sewers," the Detective stated after they turned another corner.

The entrance was a cavernous hole carved out of the street, a mass of dirt and rubble held up only by wooden planks. The hole into the sewers itself was dark, the group could barely see into the thing despite the fact they were in the middle of a rather sunny day. Though the detective had claimed that the sewers had never been used it smelled distinctly of dirt and human excrement, though that could have just been the steady trickle of cold liquid that was making its way down the incline and into the proposed sewage system.

"Can you smell it?" Vastra asked, her voice hoarse.

"Course I can, smells terrible," Clara responded, resisting the urge to hold her nose shut with her hand and breathe through her mouth.

"No… not that, from deeper in. Of course, you're just an ape, you don't need to use your nose in the way my people did," The Lizard snapped.

"Madame Vastra, are you okay?" Jenny asked, resting a comforting hand on her wife's shoulder. She shied away from the touch, as if the contact burned her.

"Jenny please, do not touch me right now… that scent is overpowering," she hissed.

"What in blazes do you mean Lady Detective, all I can smell is the poo over there," the detective rather brashly announced, gesturing at the trickle of water.

"Bodies, detective, I can smell… human flesh decomposing."

 _ **AN: and that's all she wrote folks! Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, and once more sorry that this is so short. I really wanted to get a chapter out and I haven't been able to because I am a uni student and since the summester is coming to a close we've had our winter finals and stuff. Been a really freaking busy time let me tell you! Still, thank you all for the enormous support. I've got a very clear idea in my head of where I am taking this fic now. It's going to be real fun I tell you!**_

 _ **Guest: You noticed my play on 'Clara Who' WELL DONE!**_

 _ **SlytherinWarriorSlayer: I totally forgot that she was reading the gallifreyan manual. I cannot go back and change what I said about her not understanding gallifreyan, but consider it retconned!**_

 _ **JacksMarie: I WILL TRY TO UPDATE MORE OFTEN, PROMISE!**_

 _ **Chocolate Minion: Thanks for the suggestion, as you can see I am now doing this.**_

 _ **QUESTION OF THE CHAPTER: Can I call Me Ashildr instead? Or at least have Clara call her Ashildr. I'll think of a reason for the change to make it seem cute after this 'episode'. Calling her 'Me' in the narrative is tiresome and confusing… I won't do it if you guys dont want me to though!**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Disclaimer: This one gets really kinda bloody toward the end. Discretion for squeamish viewers is advised.**_

"You should go back to the station, detective. Gather reinforcements, we may need them in the time to come," Vastra ordered, her nose flaring at the scent only her heightened senses could pick up. "The smell of blood is fresh, whatever is going on down there is happening now, whatever we're up against is feasting as we speak."

The detective visibly paled, the blood rushing out of his cheeks as his mind worked overtime. He'd never seen the veiled detective so worried, her voice so shaken, she'd always been the voice of reason when the force had nowhere else to turn. The fact that she was worried meant that whatever was happening in the depths of those tunnels was impossibly dangerous. More so than the killer snowmen, more so than even the dinosaur in the thames. He gave her a quick nod.

"Yes Madame Vastra, at once. Reinforcements will be along as soon as I can make it back to the station," He replied, and then ran before waiting for a response from any of the group.

"Vastra, I've never seen you so shaken. What's wrong?" Jenny remarked, once more placing a hand on her shoulder. Vastra flinched away from the touch more violently this time, hissing slightly, her tongue flicking out of her mouth. Jenny let out a gasp of fear and backed away, her wife had never been so openly aggressive towards her before.

"The scent of ape blood, I have not eaten flesh from your kind for a very long time Jenny, it is making my instincts run wild," she spat, turning away from the three shocked humans. "Touch me again and I do not know if I will be able to stop myself from killing you."

Jenny's features drooped, her heart plummeting deep into her gut. She'd never heard her wife say those words to her, never before had the Silurian woman ever made a threat of violence. They'd always been loving and caring from the very moment that the Doctor had brought them together.

"Is it safe for you to go down there then?" Clara asked. "Will you be putting us at risk if you get closer to the source of the blood?"

Vastra chuckled darkly, a laughter tinted with rage and insanity, a laugh that Clara had heard many times in her travels across the cosmos with the Doctor. It was a laugh that signalled the coming of pain and terror, a laughter that only ever came accompanied by a deep and dark bloodlust. The woman wouldn't be stopped now, she would hunt down the creature whatever the cost, even if it meant the life of her spouse. She was too far gone to be reasoned with.

"I'll try my best not to put you all at danger, but naturally I can't promise a thing at this juncture. The risk is entirely your own," Vastra snapped, her voice was without remorse or fear. "I must sate this new found lust for blood, here and now."

Clara wasn't happy with the answer, and she doubted the other two in her party were either. Jenny looked petrified, her eyes wide orbs of shock and fear, she'd never expect to see her wife act in such unbridled aggression, especially not when it was thrown at her. Ashildr was pensive, her face hard to read, but Clara was sure that the hybrid was waiting for any sign to put the lizard down if things turned nasty. With millennia of fighting experience securely under her belt, Clara was sure that she could do it too.

Vastra had begun to walk into the darkness, no doubt her silurian heritage allowed her to see in the minimal light of the sewage system with ease. Alongside her developed sense of smell she would find the murderer in no time flat. Ashildr pulled out a torch, noting that Clara had no way to make light appear out of nowhere. They followed on in silence.

The only sounds were the clacks of four pairs of feet on the newly laid floor, each footstep echoed loudly in the small area, not doing anything to help alleviate the already dark atmosphere. Occasionally Ashildr's torch light would brush against something small and squirming on the ground, rats that would quickly rush away from the light and into the hidey holes they had already crafted through the shoddy Victorian brickwork. The tension was thick, thicker than in any situation Clara had found herself in before. There was something about Vastra that made her feel dangerous in this instant, more so than even the Doctor on his darkest of nights. She felt like a wild animal, caged and ready to lash out at the nearest thing and then tear the flesh off of its bones.

The lizard leading the way stopped suddenly, and so did her human followers, she lifted her head into the air and sniffed audibly. What she smelt brought a smile onto her face, wide and bearing all of her jagged pointy teeth.

"I'd stay back if I were you," she hissed, her voice filled with malice as it reverberated around the tunnel. "Wouldn't want you fleshy creatures to get hurt."

With that she bounded away from the three humans, taking a quick right further down the tunnel and discarding her veil completely. The three humans stood there in shock for a moment, unsure of whether they should even follow. What would they see around that corner, would they ever be able to unsee it?

"Do we follow her?" Ashildr asked.

"She's my wife," Jenny snapped. "I've never seen her like this before… but she's still my wife. I'm going after her whether or not you two do."

The human bounded off after the lizard, turning the corner. A flash of bright light illuminated the corridor Jenny had run down, followed by a pained howling of something that was definitely not human and a deep rumbling throughout the tunnel.

"It's not safe, Clara," Ashildr warned, clearly knowing what was running through her friends mind.

"Doesn't matter Ashildr, they're my friends… Not like I can just leave them fighting against some unknown evil all by themselves is it?" Clara replied, a smile working its way onto her face. Helping people, fighting back against the bad guys, the adrenaline that topped it off in a neat little bow. It was what she lived for, and Ashildr seemingly couldn't help but smile back.

"No… I guess we can't," the viking grinned, before the both of them ran around the corner themselves.

The creature in the center of the room was illuminated by four fires that hung from each corner, dangling off of medieval chandeliers that swung slightly in the breeze that was coming from a grating at the back of the room. The lights flickered against its waxen skin, illuminating its cankered flesh and pustuled sores. Its eyes glowed a vibrant red, almost artificial in the way they stood out from the paleness of its skin. The creature stood taller than any of the women by at least double their height, a towering mess of limbs and what appeared to be technology. A bastardised creation of human flesh and alien tech, marred together to create something much darker than the sum of its parts. Around the room sat piles of corpses, none of them fully intact, from all genders and of all ages. The creature before them had paid no discretion in those it had murdered, dragging them kicking and screaming to the depths of its lair where it had ripped them apart and feasted on their still beating hearts. Those that had been savaged on the surface were only the tip of the iceberg, the viscera that was present in its cavern was horrifying.

"I told you to stay away from this fight, Jenny," Vastra gasped, pushing her wife out of the way of an incoming rocket from one of the launchers on the things back, allowing the missile to impact on the wall of the sewer and blow it into shrapnel.

"Oh yeah, because I was really gonna leave me wife to fight some alien bastard on her own," Jenny snarked, running toward the creature and slicing at its leg with the sword she had unsheathed from her knee length boot. The sword burrowed deep and emerged from the other side, its blade tinted red. The creature stumbled and fell to its knee with a bellow of pain. It grabbed Jenny before she had the chance to move away and threw her back at her Lizard wife, the two colliding and falling into a heap on the ground. Jenny rolled off of the Silurian and staggered back to her feet, wiping the trickle of blood that had begun to fall from her lip with her sleeve. "Tough bastard, isn't he."

Vastra only nodded in reply, narrowing her eyes at the creature. She had been on the defensive so far, gauging its speed and abilities. Now that she had that knowledge it wouldn't be long before she would be able to take it down, but with Jenny in the way it would be trickier.

"I need you to listen to me Jenny," She stated quickly, dropping down into a crouched position. "You need to stay back now, and I don't want you to argue with me, I'm going to end this."

Not giving her wife a chance to respond Vastra sprung up from her position, running toward the towering monstrosity at full pelt. The creature raised both its arms, the palms of which glowed with a blue hue. Vastra started to weave, her face holding a manic smile, the creature was playing right into her hands. Beams of blue light shot out of the creatures palms, striking the ground where she had been only moments before each time they launched. No matter what the creature did it couldn't move its hands quick enough to aim at her again before she moved out of the way.

Zigging and zagging Vastra closed on the beast, which seemed to have a worried grimace on its waxen features. She leapt, spinning in the air and deflected a final blue beam with her sword, sending it careening into the ground next to where Clara and Ashildr were watching the conflict with awed expressions on their faces. She drove the sword deep into the creature's right eye, the orb popping into a jellified glutinous mess dripping down the blade to the sword's hilt. Vastra must of hit something important as the beast began to teeter forwards onto its knees. She jumped from its head, finishing off with a final mid air pirouette, and landed amongst the viscera where the being had been feasting.

The fight wasn't over yet. On its back the creatures heavy artillery was still active, morphing and changing into smaller weapons, and already small robots were climbing out of the creatures still moaning head to repiece its eye and whatever brain matter it had lost during the fight. Vastra snarled and brought her sword down into the creature's skull again, hacking deep into the bone and flesh on the top of its head. She withdrew and waited for signs of life, there was. Her growl grew in pitch. Clara, Jenny and Ashildr would forever remember that day as the day Vastra lost control.

Vastra flung her sword to the side, where it flew and landed with a wet sound amongst a pile of bodies, and dug her hands deep into the skull of the creature lying on the ground. It squirmed on the ground and began to groan anew, its pained cries echoing throughout the sewers. Vastra began to pull, ripping the creature's head open as quickly as the repair droids within it could repair the damage.

"You threaten my city," She snarled, smirking as the skull cracked and gave way under her grip.

"You cause me to scare the woman I love," She yanked again, a dark chuckle brewing in the depths of her chest and ripping its way out of her as she could begin to see the brain within the creature's skull.

"And you murder all these innocent civilians?" She growled, plunging both hands even deeper into the creature's head, squeezing at the fleshy grey brain matter within. With one final tug she wrenched her hands from the hybrids body, tugging out its brain and the majority of its spine along with it. The creature shuddered and grew still, its moans falling silent at last, the robotic repair droids curling up and dying.

The beast was dead, but at what cost?

 _ **AN: I was away for a little while because of uni and work and then maybe anime, which kind of shows in this fight scene a little bit. Sorry it got so bloody and gory, I was listening to an anime soundtrack and it just sort of happened… So yeah, sorry about that! But at least the chapter was both long and well written! Woooooo!**_

 _ **Bwburke94: We'll see what happens at Christmas. In the words of a good friend of mine though, 'Fuck the canon'.**_

 _ **JAIMOL: Thank you! Hopefully this sort of lets you know that this will be much darker than your average episode of Who.**_

 _ **SuperCooper101 and Jacks Marie: I'm just calling her Ashildr. Me does not sound or feel good in the narrative.**_

 _ **QUESTION OF THE CHAPTER! : Has Vastra gone too far? Hell… Have I gone too far with the darkness of this fic already?**_


	7. Chapter 7

Vastra fell to her knees in the midst of the viscera, her eyes wide and her mouth contorted into a bizarre grimace. She was laughing maniacally, short bursts of harsh sound as she continued to pull the brains of the mutated creature apart into smaller and smaller chunks.

"Vastra," Clara called out cautiously. "Are you okay?"

Vastra stopped for a moment but did not turn around to address the human, then resumed her work once more. Taking apart the brain piece by piece, dicing it smaller and smaller using only her nimble fingers as knives.

"Vastra please," Jenny threw in, her voice more desperate than Clara's. "Please stop this madness. It's not right, love. What you're doin ain't right."

This seemed to make Vastra hasten her actions, her hands moving quicker and quicker.

"Must… Destroy the central nervous system… Stop reproduction of body parts," She snarled, seeming at the very end of her tether.

"Jenny, you've never seen her like this before?" Ashildr questioned. The Victorian woman shook her head.

"Stay where you are, all of you, hands on your heads, nobody move," A voice cut out over their conversation. Clara jumped slightly, her hands moving quicker than her thoughts could follow to her head. It's not every day that you were stuck in an unused sewer with a lizard woman, an immortal girl, a Victorian and a giant mutated creature with its brains being chopped up. The abrasive harshness of the toffs tone was enough to make her do as he said in that setting.

"This area is now under Torchwood control, Madame Vastra, we request you to step away from the creature at once," The man continued, still well behind Clara and Ashildr. She didn't dare turn around in fear of being attacked, she still had no idea what a bullet or any other kind of physical injury would do to her body in her immortal state.

Vastra disregarded the man completely, still tearing away at the creature's internals. She had moved from the fragments of brain that were now diced and scattered on the floor of the sewer and had began to scoop up pieces from within its head, squeezing and tearing at the tip of the aliens spine.

"I implore you to desist in your action, Madame Vastra, this operation is now under Torchwood jurisdiction. Not whatever it is you are doing, this is your final warning."

She growled. It was quiet at first, but as Vastra strained to forcibly pull the spine from the creature's body it grew in volume. Clara faintly heard a weapon power up behind her, accompanied by the cranking of what sounded like a handle in dire need of some WD-40. The shot was bright blue and flickered in the air, a little ball of static as if it had been launched straight out of a plasma ball. It impacted Vastra in the middle of her back, crackling across her clothes and burning the veil off of her head. Her back arched and her mouth opened in a silent scream of pain.

"Vastra?!" Jenny called out, her tone wavering. She sprinted over to the fallen silurian, only to be gunned down by the same blue glow as her wife.

With a snarl Ashildr turned on the spot, unholstering the small plasma pistol she kept strapped to her arm and letting it slide into her hand. Before she could bring the gun up to the man that had fired on the other two women already she too had been struck down by a blue ball of energy. She let out a small gasp of air and fell to the ground, little arcs of energy sparking off of her clothes and onto the ground.

"Now just wait a minute," Clara said, trying not to look at the bodies of her friends on the ground. For all she knew they were all dead, including Ashildr. Ashildr's immortality was a peculiar breed, it didn't allow her to recover from mortal damage. If she died, she wouldn't be brought back, she would be dead forever. She could be dead for ever right now. Clara bit back the bile that threatened to rise up her throat, she couldn't break in front of the men who could potentially kill her too. Torchwood was dangerous, She'd learned that much from Jenny Harkness. "You don't… You don't have to shoot me. I'll do whatever you say."

The man chuckled from behind her. "Good. We wouldn't want any more accidents like your little friends, hmm?"

Before she knew it a black bag had been placed over her head, made of a soft yet thick cotton, obscuring everything from view. Coarse, rough hands grasped her own and pulled them behind her back before firmly locking them in a pair of handcuffs.

"We're going to walk you out to our carriage now, Don't try to escape and you won't get hurt, do you understand?" The man asked her, his voice close to her ear.

"Yes, I understand," Clara replied, trying to keep her voice as neutral and professional as possible.

"This is a routine process, debriefing of a sort. You'll be back on the street again in no time," the voice claimed before turning her on the spot and guiding her back through the sewer system to its entrance.

Clara fought back a bitter snort at that. Debriefing? The man had just killed her travelling companion and two of her friends, what kind of debriefing could possibly make up for such an act? By her clothes, a simple pair of jeans and a button up blouse, they will have already assumed that she was not of Earthly origin. It would be much more than a simple debriefing, and if she wasn't careful she may just end up with a bullet lodged firmly in her skull.

To say that it wasn't how Clara had wanted or expected the day to go was an understatement. Typical TARDIS, really. Bringing her and her companion straight into danger, straight where they needed to be most in order to make the biggest impact on helping people. But who was there to help them when things went sour? Who was there to make sure that everything went right with the biggest brain in the room? She'd gotten three of her friends killed, and it was all because she wasn't with _him_. She had no Doctor to back her up. Clara bit down on her cheek, making it so it were only tears that seeped from her eyes and no sobs from her mouth. She had to be strong, but it was breaking her inside. She had failed.

Clara let out a slight grunt of pain as she was shoved onto the wooden bench of a horse drawn carriage. There was a time, when she was a little girl, that she would have killed to ride around in the back of a horse drawn carriage. Most children had that wish, even though many of them wouldn't admit it, the act held a sort of grandeur that couldn't be escaped. But in the back of that carriage, her senses blocked off by a heavy hood, Clara had never felt more alone.

 _ **AN: Hello once again, avid readers that you are. I come bearing gifts! So yes, we have involved a primitive version of Torchwood. They have only been active for 50 years and good ol' Jackie boy hasn't even been recruited yet. At this time, Torchwood were volatile and dangerous. The fact that Clara is now in their hands is bad stuff. Oh yeah, and everyone is dead. OOPS!**_

 _ **Jacks Marie: Thank you once more! Your continued support means ever so much to me!**_

 _ **Guest About Darkness: I've killed everyone. Dark enough for you?**_

 _ **Azure: I replied to you in PM, BUT, I also didn't do the thing I said I was gonna do. They weren't actually in Torchwood yet and were doing all other stuff. I did research after the PM. Hopefully this new twist will suffice.**_


	8. Chapter 8

Clara's teeth clattered together violently each time the carriage rocketed over a bump in the cobblestone, dragged forward at impossible speeds through the narrow streets of Victorian London. There were no seatbelts in the vehicle and she couldn't hold onto anything due to her bound hands, so it relied on the unreliable hand of her kidnapper to keep her anchored to the hard wooden seat. He didn't do a very good job to say the least.

"The journey won't be long," the Torchwood agent exclaimed over the rattling of the wooden wheels across the old cobbled streets. "Torchwood has a monopoly on the roads in London, we aren't bothered by the average street peelers."

"Peelers?" Clara couldn't help but respond, not able to pull the memory from her own Victorian memories. The memories of her past selves were in a hard to reach place of her mind, walled off by a mental block of crumbling concrete. Solid, but cracked enough to let whispers of memory through.

"You really aren't from town, are you?" the agent snarked. "Peelers, the local Bobbies? The Coppers, policemen."

Clara stayed silent at his explanation. She didn't want to get into lengthy conversation with the man, the less he knew the better. He already suspected, if not downright knew, of her partially extraterrestrial origins and that immediately made her a threat to queen and country. In the Victorian era Torchwood were a harsh lot, usually shooting on sight and asking questions later. Well, that could at least be said with her friends. They were probably riding in the back of her carriage, each wrapped in individual body bags .

The vehicle came to a sudden stop, threatening to throw her out of her seat, which it probably would have done if not for the hand on her shoulder. They clearly wanted her uninjured then. That made sense, more things to injure later if they wanted to get information. No doubt Torchwood were not above torture when they wanted something. Clara felt herself get hoisted to her feet and gently lowered out of the carriage. They walked for a short while, feet crunching over gravel and then onto what felt like tiles. Escape would be difficult now, she was in the depths of Torchwood.

After a brief walk through an unknown amount of twisting and turning Clara was unceremoniously shoved into a hard metal chair. Her hands were forcibly raised and placed onto a table, where she felt the chain of her handcuffs shake, no doubt she was being anchored down to the table. Clara couldn't help but note the irony of the situation. If the Alpha version of herself had been captured by a simple pair of handcuffs she would simply make herself intangible and walk away, taunting them all the while. She didn't have that luxury, she had to sit through the process and think of something clever to get out of the other end. If she even could make it out at the end, that was.

She made sure to display a cocky smile when the bag was whipped off of her head. Assume that she could win, that was how the Doctor had made it out of all of his impossible adventures, and it was a trait that she would continue to display. The man was well built, his jaw line clearly defined, his hair cut short and neat, and his eyes a chocolatey blue. All in all the Torchwood officer was everything that someone would expect from a smarmy government official, if anything Clara was impressed that he'd deigned to get his hands dirty instead of getting some underling to carry out the interrogation himself.

"You're not from Earth," the agent stated, cutting to the chase as he sat down on his own chair. A much more comfortable chair at that, made from nicely upholstered cushions and fine wood. No doubt to make Clara feel somehow inferior at her lack of proper seating, all it did was make her smirk grow.

"Who wants to know?" she retorted, feigning as if she hadn't a clue what was going on. She was stalling for time, and by the look on his face the agent wasn't having any of it.

"Torchwood," he stated simply. "Britain's first defence against incoming extraterrestrial threats, as sanctioned by Her Majesty Queen Victoria." he said it all with such a smug expression on his face, pride at wiping out innocent aliens that were just trying to make their way in the universe. He leant across the table slightly, narrowing his eyes as he did so in what he perceived to be threatening but what Clara perceived to be completely pointless, she felt threatened enough with the bag over her head and being chained to a table. "But I'd wager you knew all that already, so let's cut all the bullshit and get to the meat of the issue-"

"Oh I see, so your meat is your issue, makes sense yeah, thought you were overcompensating with the grungy secret base thing" Clara's smirk grew at the agent's bewildered expression.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh no… nothing… Just remember, it's how you use it," she said with a wink.

The agent blinked, incredibly perturbed as he seemed to understand the gist of Clara's teasing. "You know, you remind me of a ladybird I met once. She was a great night, wonder if you're the same?"

"Oh I only shag girls, can one of them interview me instead?" Clara said innocently, batting her eyelids at the agent.

He gave a short laugh and ran his hand through his hair. "Don't know where you're from, but in Great Britain we don't like our women to talk back like that. Answer my questions and we'll let you go, don't, you die."

"For a start you've already killed my friends," Clara retorted, dropping the playful facade and allowing her face to settle into an icy glare. "Do you really expect me to think you're going to let me go after this? I know what Torchwood does to off-worlders."

"We know how to make stubborn creatures talk, you're basically humanoid, we know how to make you hurt."

"Ah well, there's mistake number two. Not the first one to make it with me, but it is a little rookie. You've already threatened me with death, physical pain is a bit of a step down don't you think?" Clara met the detectives intense stare head on, neither of them relenting. Clara didn't physically need to blink, so it was unsurprising when the agent looked away first.

"You were caught associating with two known accomplices of a rogue alien known as 'the Doctor,' where is he now?" the agent asked, changing his tact.

Clara rolled her eyes. "Oh, the Doctor, always comes down to him doesn't it?" She sighed. "I don't know where the Doctor is, and he doesn't know who I am either. No link there whatsoever, if that's what you're asking for then you're barking up the wrong tree mate."

"The last time the Doctor was encountered he was seen with a woman that Queen Victoria described as 'Naked'. Whilst you are not exactly underdressed your clothes are… not of this world. Where is the Doctor?"

"I don't know!" Clara retorted, trying to force as much sincerity into her voice as possible. No matter how much the agent pushed there was no way that she would be able to tell him where the Doctor was, not that she would if she did know. That didn't stop him from drawing the weapon that he had used to kill Ashildr, Vastra and Jenny and slowly begin to crank the handle the powered the weapon, steadily causing the blue glow that indicated its power levels to rise.

"Tell me, or I will be forced to use this weapon," he ordered, standing from his seat.

Clara opened her mouth to once more reply that she had no idea where the Doctor was and that their back and forth could go on ad nauseam because she really wasn't lying, but before she could say any of that they were interrupted by a series of yells, gunshots, and then silence. Clara felt her previous smile return, that had to be Ashildr. Somehow she had survived. Somehow whatever gun the agent had used against her hadn't been enough to overwhelm the Mire technology that kept the immortal hybrid ticking. Ashildr kicked the door open, her face in a stern grin, and raised her arm. Without giving the agent who had been interrogating Clara a chance she shot him through the head, spraying pieces of brain and fragments of bone across the table, and to Clara's horror allowing him to fall to the floor dead.

Ashildr had killed for her.

 _ **AN: Haha, look at that, Ashildr isn't dead. What a shocker! Not really that shocking is it. I mean the fic is called 'Clara and Me'. Couldn't very well kill off half of the duo in the first storyline could I? Vastra and Jenny haven't shown up though so there is that. Oh also! Seafoam-Tainted-Memoirs gifted me an awesome piece of cover art, yay her! It fits my fic right in alongside her fic in terms of style when it comes to our conjoined superverse. Seriously, go read her series, the later chapters will make these chapters make a slight bit more sense when I mention stuff like Dimension doors and the Alpha Crew. Who knows, might even encounter 13.**_

 _ **Bwburke94: I like to stick close to canon if I can. At times when that means I can dabble with things like Torchwood and the Paternosters and all those other factions from nu-who and Old-who? Then god yes I will!**_

 _ **Jacks Marie: Things are going to get more wibbly than this my friend! Glad you're enjoying it!**_

 _ **Question of the Chapter: Are we all looking forward to the Christmas Episode of Doctor Who yet? I am, looks like it should be a blast of much needed fun that we haven't had for a while with all this doom and gloom. Should I do a Christmas themed chapter for Christmas Day that breaks the continuity of the fic and just happens on Christmas?**_


	9. Chapter 9

The body slumped to the ground, a sizzling hole carved into its head from where Ashildr's bolt of plasma had cut through bone, brains and cartilage. Tears bit at the corners of Clara's eyes. Never be cruel, never be cowardly and if you are always make amends; that was what the Doctor had said to her before she had forgotten. The sight before her went against everything her best friend had ever taught her. They didn't kill, she didn't kill, not unless it was absolutely necessary. Whilst the agent had been threatening and would have eventually gunned her down there was another way, almost always there was another way.

"you killed him," Clara whispered, her voice quiet and hoarse. "He had a family and a life and maybe even children and… you took that away from him."

Ashildr looked puzzled as she readied another shot, aiming her plasma pistol at the chains that bound Clara to the table.

"He was going to kill you," Ashildr exclaimed, "you didn't give him what he wanted, he would have killed you for that."

She loosed the shot, the green bolt of energy flying true and striking the chains which melted instantly.

"Before you got here I heard gunshots…" Clara said slowly. "how many?"

Ashildr didn't reply, her face betraying her new found embarrassment and shock at her actions. She'd clearly thought that Clara would be pleased with her actions, that she had done the right thing in coming to her rescue. That was what friends did, they helped each other no matter the cost. A sentiment that Clara did not share.

"How many?" she asked again, training be voice to a yell.

"I don't know," Ashildr answered meekly. "Clara you don't understand."

"Oh really, what is it I don't get about this Ashildr? You have murdered god knows how many Torchwood agents. Don't you get how wrong that is?" Clara could feel the anger building in her chest. Day in and day out this was the kind of person she and the Doctor took down, stopping them from bringing pain and despair. Now she was travelling with that pain and despair, promising to take it across the stars.

"I have lived for a long time Clara," Ashildr began, her voice cool and collected. "Through that time I've watched entire civilisations wither and fall to dust, people I love crumble and fade. The years have not been kind. Did I ever tell you why I called myself Me?"

Clara shook her head. She knew that the Doctor had met Ashildr at least once more, and that things had happened that day he hadn't wanted to speak about, but Ashildr had never revealed why she had changed her name too something so odd to Clara.

"Being immortal in the presence of normal mortal people is a… taxing business. Humans are short and fragile in their lifespans, they fade quickly. I was very lonely, I had no idea what I was since you and the Doctor ran away so quickly without so much as a simple explanation. So it turned into me vs the universe, alone and forgotten. I stood tall, against the wiles of time, but my memories… human and weak," she spat, looking toward the ground at that comment. "The woman that you knew as Ashildr slowly died, her memories being overwritten with new ones so many times. In the end my name lost all meaning to me, as did any other name I tried to give myself through time. In the end I settled on 'Me' because it suited me perfectly. It described the person that I would always be, myself at the time. Clara these aren't the first men I have killed, killing was his I survived as long as I did. It's all this me knows how to do to live… have I disappointed you?"

Disappointment was putting it mildly, Clara was angry, but she wasn't without compassion. Ashildr had been through a long, lonely life with memories fading and love ones fading along with them, it was really unsurprising how that pressure and time had warped Ashildr in such a negative fashion. If anything, Clara was surprised that the other immortal hadn't gone further off the edge than she already had. Clara let out a long breath.

"Okay, you're alive now, but I saw the Torchwood agent shoot you. How did you survive?" Clara asked, not answering Ashildr's query.

"The shot wasn't lethal, it was designed to incapacitate. I came too so quickly because of my advanced healing, they weren't expecting that so I managed to take them by surprise," Ashildr replied, the immortal looked like she was getting impatient to leave. They were wasting time with their idle chit chat.

"So Vastra and Jenny will be okay as well then?"

"Jenny will be, I'm not sure how the voltage would affect Vastra considering she's a Silurian, but it shouldn't have been lethal for either of them."

"Right then, we need to save them," Clara stated with a small smile. "But before that, give me your gun."

"My gun?" Ashildr replied, clearly confused.

"Yes, the pistol thing in your hand. Gimme."

Reluctantly Ashildr handed it over to Clara, she hadn't had the weapon all that long but it had still seen her through some rather hairy situations. Clara dropped the weapon to the ground and stomped on it, hard, her trainer clad foot crushing the flimsy weapon completely.

"That's not how we do things, okay? You and I, we help people and we don't under any circumstances use a weapon, not to kill. There's always a choice, understand? I know you've had a hard life and you've lost a lot of people and most of the time you've survived by fighting the universe tooth and nail, but you don't need to do that anymore. I'm immortal too now, and sure that might be temporary and I'll have to leave eventually, but for now we do this together, okay? We make the universe a better place together, we don't make it suffer even more." She emphasised with a final twist if her foot, crunching the plasma pistol even further. "Right then, let's find Jenny and Vastra and get out of here."

Clara strode out into the hallway, trying to ignore the five or so Torchwood corpses littered on the ground.

"That was my favourite pistol…" Ashildr muttered under her breath, following after her.

 _ **AN: I wrote this one on my phone on a 2 hour train journey. I hate writing on my phone, actually absolutely despise it. You guys might end up getting two chapters today though, so there's that. We'll be wrapping this up tomorrow and then I'll be going on hiatus until Christmas day. When I say I'll be going on hiatus I mean I'll be writing up a long and awesome Christmas spectacular to be released just after the episode of Doctor Who finishes, should be a 10k long blast! It's also not going to count towards my goal of 12 storylines, consider it a nice additional extra. I already have the plot it should be great!**_

 _ **Since I'm on my phone I can't reply to reviews this chapter, but as always thanks for the continued support!**_

 _ **Question of the chapter:**_

 _ **Was Clara too harsh on Ashildr? That WAS her favourite pistol.**_


	10. Chapter 10

Ignoring the bodies scattered on the floor, holes in their bodies still gently cooking from the hot plasma that had been forced through them, Clara and Ashildr crept through the hallways of the Torchwood base. They were on a mission to save Vastra and Jenny, and then get the hell out of there. The fact that Clara had been under a bag and Ashildr had been unconscious didn't help things, in essence they had no idea where they were going.

"I came from this direction," Ashildr stated, walking out in front of Clara and down the hallway. "It would make sense if all of the holding cells were in the same area, they'd want to be able to easily contain a breakout if one happened and they would only be able to do that if all the cells were in the same spot."

Clara's eyes widened when she saw what was in Ashildr's hand, yet another gun. This one was no where near as sleek and refined as the one she had already destroyed and instead looked as if it had been created from scraps, shards of metal sticking out of nearly every surface in violent angles, pieces of wire connecting the trigger to the barrel and body of the gun. Whatever it was it looked dangerous, a weapon made out of scraps with the explicit purpose of killing.

"I can't believe you," Clara muttered, stopping dead in the middle of the corridor.

"What do you mean?" Ashildr replied, taking a few more steps before realising Clara was no longer following her.

"Even though I just explained why weapons are wrong… you just pull another one? I thought you understood my point."

Ashildr let out a long breath of air, looking to the ground not in fear or embarrassment but her own disbelief. She gave Clara a sad smile, one that betrayed the age of her youthful face.

"I've lived longer than your Doctor you know, such a long time… Billions upon Billions of years. Some things are ingrained deep into me, and peaceful negotiation is not one of those things. You're young Clara, still naive, I survived to the end of time itself, long since all the other immortals had crumbled into dust… I didn't do that by talking."

"The Doctor wouldn't approve…"

"Well the Doctor isn't here," Ashildr yelled out, causing Clara to flinch. "The Doctor isn't here and for me he never was, so it's just us now. He doesn't even remember you, he forgot, so why don't you get off of your self righteous high horse and help me save your friends."

"But Me… Killing people is wrong, how can you seriously not see that?" Clara responded, feeling a lump form in her throat at Ashildr's reminder of the Doctor's memory.

"How many times, Clara, the universe is kill or be killed, even your precious Doctor understood that," the immortal Viking sneered. "The amount of races he has wiped out, the amount of blood on that man's hands and you still hold him in such high esteem?" Ashildr shook her head and turned away from Clara, once more walking down the corridor. "One day you'll realise how dangerous that man was, how he could turn armies merely by the mention of his name, and then you'll come to realise he was nowhere near as much of a pacifist as you believed him to be."

Clara didn't know how to respond to that, so she didn't counter Ashildr any further. It was useless when she was being so stubborn, not listening to any kind of reason. The Doctor may not have been a complete pacifist, but he never would have willingly hurt an entire species, not unless he absolutely had to. Not unless he was so backed into a corner that he had no other choice. His last words to her while he still remembered, never be cruel, never be cowardly… she would follow those words and if it was the last thing she did she'd make sure that Ashildr understood them as well, what they meant and what they stood for.

She was brought out of her musing by a flash of green and the sound of energy being discharged followed by a heavy clank of metal. The door to one of the holding cells fell backward, hitting the ground hard,revealing Jenny and Vastra. Jenny was chained to the wall of the cell, one arm pulled tight against the concrete and the rest of her body slumped into a pile. She rose her head weakly as the door fell to the ground, revealing violent hues of red across her face and a trickle of blood coming from between her lips. It was obvious whoever had been with them before Ashildr started firing had been torturing the girl.

Vastra had been placed onto a metal table, all four of her limbs strapped down by heavy metal clamps. Above her unconscious form hung what looked like a laser, bulky and heavy powered by a glowing generator in the corner.

"They were goin' ta dissect Vastra," Jenny coughed weakly, barely able to raise her head. "Find out what she was, how they could kill the rest of her people."

Ashildr raised her makeshift weapon and aimed it at Jenny's shackle, blasting it apart into tiny fragments of molten metal, before turning the weapon on the table Vastra was strapped to and blasting those champs to smithereens as well.

"Jenny, get close to vastra, we'll be back with the TARDIS in a matter of seconds. We'll materialise around the both of you, okay? Easiest way to get you both out," Clara instructed, grabbing Ashildr's hand and pulling her along with her. Ashildr came along willingly, Clara was right with the assumption that using the TARDIS would be the easiest way to get them out. They were too injured to make the walk themselves. She knew the plan had worked as the sounds of the TARDIS echoed through the halls of the Torchwood base.

 _ **AN: Underwhelming, I know. I was meant to be halfway into a christmas special by now, maybe even at the tail end of it, but I'm not. I was visiting family and things got slightly out of hand in the visiting department. So many family members so little time… Anyway, merry christmas hope you all had a good one! Very nearly done with this storyline thank goodness, no where near as good as I thought it would be. in the next chapter we get to do things like see the new interior to the TARDIS which will be fun fun fun fun fun! I actually have an artists rendition kicking about somewhere… might take some time to locate it though…**_

 _ **Replies:**_

 _ **skarosianlifeform**_ _ **: All things will be explained! Deals have been struck, immunities forged, and I am glad you are enjoying so far! Oh I have also probably sent you a PM clearing up some of your confusions, this is technically the Beta Verse in a bigger Super-Verse that combines with the greater 3D9C Alpha-Verse of Seafoam-Tainted-Memoirs. Dont worry, you dont need to have read that 1.7 mill epic really.**_

 _ **bwburke94: And she still hasn't learned her lesson. These 12 storylines will give both ashildr and Clara a chance to evolve in terms of character.**_

 _ **Robert and Jacks Marie: Thank you both for reviewing!**_

 _ **Question of the Chapter: Should I still go through with my christmas plans but make them less christmassy? I had a cool idea with Pluto and killer robots...Seafoam liked it**_


	11. Chapter 11

Jenny didn't need to be told twice to get close to her wife. In fact, on the rather short list of things to do that had taken presence in her mind, getting close to her wife was quite possibly on the top. So that is what she did, painfully, she shuffled closer to the still unconscious lizard that lay on the table in the middle of the room. She held the reptilian close, gasping at the ice cold touch of her scales, Vastra had never been that cold before. While Vastra's species was naturally cold blooded the lizard often used Jenny's own body heat to keep her own internal temperatures up, they'd been separated for too long and she hadn't had access to any geothermal energy either. Jenny held her close and shivered, in short Vastra was dying from the cold, and wouldn't make it if she didn't get some heat and it was all Torchwood's fault.

A few seconds passed before the room was filled with a hideous screeching and a violent wind. To any normal human from the time period they were sounds and gusts that would cause panic or at least some degree of shock, but to Jenny Flint they only brought hope. The sounds were that of reality itself being warped, and the winds were winds of time with only one possible origin, the TARDIS. The exterior of the time space ship began to manifest first, ripples of wood in the shape of a grandfather clock that managed to absorb both the women and the metal table they were slumped on, even though those exterior dimensions had no right to hold such large items. But Jenny noticed none of that, the Victorian was focused on only one thing, her wife.

The interior of Clara and Ashildr's TARDIS had changed drastically. Its white colour scheme remained, the floors and walls remaining the bright and vibrant colour that every TARDIS had at its birth. The walls of the TARDIS console room were coated in the signature 'Round things' that the Doctor had mentioned time and time again, a slight white glow emanating from each one. Jenny and Vastra had materialised, atop their table, at the bottom of a flight of stairs at the top of which stood Clara and Ashildr, beaming down at them both.

"The TARDIS re-decorated, it's why she wouldn't let us in straight away," Clara said as she leant upon a silvery chrome banister "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" Jenny spat back at her vehemently. "I think my wife has been tortured and is dying because of the cold she was exposed to and you're more worried about the state of your TARDIS?"

"Not the time for that now, Clara," Ashildr stated, pushing past the immortal. "Torchwood clearly didn't know about Silurian biology, she's suffering from an extremely low core temperature."

Ashildr placed the back of her hand onto Vastra's forehead and frowned at its icy coldness.

"Your body heat won't be enough to warm her, Jenny," Ashildr stated simply. "If we don't find a way to warm her blood quickly Vastra will undergo Retroactive Cryogenesis."

"What's that then?" Jenny asked, holding her wife tighter.

"Vastra will essentially freeze from the inside out, her body temperature will plummet as her core tries and inevitably fails to stabilise itself. We need to warm her, now."

"The TARDIS should have a medical bay," Clara cut in, "there might be a heating pack or something in there."

Ashildr nodded and vaulted over the table, sliding across the metal and sprinting off in a matter of moments. The TARDIS they were in was still young, but it should have had enough time to grow a medical bay relatively close to the control room, or at least Clara hoped they did.

"I can make you some tea if you like?" Clara asked with a smile, trying to keep Jenny's spirits up.

"Tea?" The woman in question replied incredulously.

"Yeah tea, you know, the drink that most people have with their toast in the morning. Oh wait… No I can't we don't have any milk at the moment, sorry."

"My wife is dying in my arms," Jenny said despairingly.

Clara swallowed hard and diverted her gaze to the ground. An awkward silence consumed the three of them, punctuated only by Vastra's haggard, wheezing breaths of air. Clara stole a furtive glance at the married couple and was able to see that Jenny had returned to comforting her unconscious wife by gently stroking her face. She silently chastised herself for sticking her foot so firmly in her mouth, she hadn't meant to annoy Jenny at all.

"This is a piece of Time Lord technology, I've reconfigured it to match Silurian physiology so it should warm Vastra up easily," Ashildr announced, running back into the control room and dispelling the awkwardness that hung over them after Clara's former comments.

Ashildr was only carrying a small strip of what Clara thought looked like plastic, similar to a thermometer that the welfare stocked at Coal Hill. She peeled off a piece of the device and discarded it before sticking the black item to Vastras forehead. Ashildr ran her finger along the device and it turned from black to red. It only took a few seconds for Vastras eyes to shoot open and Jenny to breath a sigh of relief.

 _ **AN: I want you all to know that I absolutely hate this chapter and absolutely hated writing it, which is why it is so short, so late and so poor. The sooner I am done with this storyline (one more chapter to go) the better in my opinion. Last minute explanations and then kicking Vastra and Jenny off the TARDIS so Clara and Ashildr can zoom off to wherever I choose. Thank god.**_

 _ **On better terms, HAPPY NEW YEAR!**_

 _ **Replies:**_

 _ **Alexandria: They can indeed land on Christmas! They could, but they won't, but they could!**_

 _ **Robert and Jacks Marie: As per usual, thank you!**_

 _ **Question of The Chapter: What do you think of my new TARDIS console room so far? I didn't describe it very well in the chapter, but think of it as 12's console room with the colour scheme of Clara and Ashildr's original console room and the round things.**_


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